Volunteers work to clean up historic Mt. Pisgah cemetery in Elsinboro

View full sizeFrom left to right, Kim Spina, Miranda Spiece, Bella Briseño and Lindsay Spiece, along with the other members of the Alloway Girl Scout Troop 93571, have been working to clean up The Mt. Pisgah A.M.E. Church Cemetery in Elsinboro. (Staff photos by Brad Kingett/Today's Sunbeam)

ELSINBORO TWP. — A few local volunteers are making sure that the history-rich gravestones at the Mt. Pisgah African Methodist Episcopal Church Cemetery are not forgotten, as time has taken its toll on the cemetery over the last 150 years.

The cemetery — which is located on Amwellbury Road, mostly in Elsinboro Township with parts stretching into Salem — has graves dating back as far as 1860, many of which are fading monuments of African American history.

Of the known 148 people buried there, as many as 28 are veterans of the American Civil War, one is a World War I veteran, and one man served in the Spanish American War.

“There’s a lot of history here,” said Corin Diana, a Woodstown resident with family ties to Salem, who has been heading the cleanup of the cemetery.

Diana said she first took an interest in the cemetery in November one day while driving by, when she decided to get out of her car to check it out.

What she found, she said, broke her heart.

Many stones were broken, some had sunk into the earth and become buried, and others were lost in overgrowth. At the back of the cemetery, trash, debris, and tires had been piled up and left like a dump site.

“It just made me sick when I saw the condition of the cemetery, especially the back,” Diana said. “I felt horrible seeing that it was in such disarray.”

Diana then decided to begin an effort to clean up the cemetery, and eventually found support from a Girl Scouts troop in Alloway.

View full sizeThe Mt. Pisgah A.M.E. Church Cemetery in Elsinboro has many broken headstones in need of repair. (Staff photos by Brad Kingett/Today's Sunbeam)

“I felt bad for the people buried here and their families,” said troop leader Kim Spina. “Imagine if you came to visit and pay tribute to a relative, and this is what you found.”

For the last three months, the Girl Scouts and Diana have been working together to upright and unearth gravestones, clean up trash, and catalog those buried in the cemetery.

However, the work needed to be done is extensive, and the group said they could use more support from the surrounding communities.

“It’s a lot of work, but when everything’s done it will be better for the environment to get all of the trash and junk out,” said Girl Scout Bella Briseño, 10, Woodstown. “It’s a way to admire the history of the slaves and what they were going through. They shouldn’t be in a cemetery that looks like this.”

Lindsay Spiece, 11, of Woodstown, added, “It’s a shame that this place was ruined. We want people to help us and keep up the good work here.”

The front portion of the cemetery is owned by Mt. Pisgah, but the church stopped burying in the cemetery around 1935. The church has since moved from Amwellbury Road to its current location on Yorke Street in Salem.

The back portions of the cemetery fall in somewhat of a gray area of ownership, with records not quite clear on who owns various smaller blocks near the Salem-Elsinboro border.

View full sizeThe Alloway Girl Scout Troop 93571 has been working to clean up The Mt. Pisgah A.M.E. Church Cemetery in Elsinboro, but there is still much work to be done. (Staff photos by Brad Kingett/Today's Sunbeam)

Volunteers cleaning up the site said they could use help with removing trash and digging out gravestones.

Diana said the cemetery could also use a new sign.

For more information or to ask about making a donation to the cemetery, contact Diana at 856-341-3614 or corinandlou@aol.com.